In A Half Shell

07/04/2026

Happy 4th! 🎆🇺🇲 From Massachusetts to Maine, Texas to Alaska, Washington to New York, here's an ode to oysters and fellow oyster nerds from coast to coast across the USA!

Hosting an oyster tasting for my friends at at with

Scroll through to learn more...

Savoring oysters with at the Glidden Point Oyster Farm SAUNA 😎 in Maine

A visit to in San Leon, TX, after a quick tour of Galveston with

It's a shuck-off in Houston, Texas, with !

Shuckers from all over gathered the symposium.

A super cool piece of oyster history spotted in 's garage!

Still thinking about these Olympia oysters, the native Pacific Coast species, enjoyed at in Olympia, WA.

In Anchorage, Alaska, for the Alaska Mariculture Conference.

Finally got to do a night tide tour at Samish Bay, Washington with led by ahead of the 2nd Oyster Educators Summit by !

Partying at the night market with delicious shellfish and drinks!

07/03/2026

The Essential Oyster Kit covers what I use at home when I'm having oysters.

It's a pretty simple set up that I've edited down over the years. Less is more!

Oyster knives are incredibly personal, so while these work for me, you may prefer something else.

I don't use oyster clamps or other contraptions. They just seem to get in my way and are a pain to store efficiently in my tiny Brooklyn kitchen.

Swipe for more details about each item in my kit. If you've got any questions about gear, leave them in the comments!

07/02/2026

Tell me about merroir without telling me about merroir.

USA turns 250 in a couple of days, which puts things into perspective. If you're 50 today, you've lived one fifth of this country's history. If you're 25, that's still one tenth! And if you're the USA, you've been around for 0.000125% or one-800,000th of the time when oysters have been around (at least 200 million years).

That's a lot of time and change to survive through. They do it without complaint, and they've done it by mostly giving back. Oysters are pretty remarkable in that way and we can learn a thing or two from them.

06/30/2026

Just enough to cover the adductor muscle in most cases! If your oyster has a small adductor or is very deep cupped, it's okay to add a bit more.

This offers the best balance between the oyster and sauce. When you add too much (like covering the entire oyster with it), it can be a choking experience, quite literally. It will also be more difficult to savor the natural flavor of the oyster.

06/08/2026

New blog post! The next time you're in Madrid and craving oysters, you'll know where to go.

A visitor’s guide to finding the best oysters in Madrid, distilled from three years of living in the city.

05/28/2026

This trip changed everything I knew about North American oyster species.

If you know where to look, you can find an exquisite variety of oyster species in Mexico that you can't get elsewhere in North America. Thanks to my friends at Bendito Mar, I got to try not one, not two, but THREE oyster species I had never tasted before. 🤯

The mangrove oyster was growing happily on their own right around the corner from Bendito Mar's San Buto farm site. I haven't confirmed the species, but my best guess is Saccostrea palmula. I thought that it would be metallic and gamey, but it was not! It was pleasantly earthy, slightly creamy, iron notes, and had nice moderate brine.

The Corteziensis aka Pleasure Oyster was brought in for the oyster tasting we did in CDMX from the La Paz area. Lower in salinity, nutty, and reminded me of periwinkles.

Finally, I had two behemoth Stone oysters, which were super meaty and molluscy. Sweet and mineral-forward, it was unlike anything I've tried.

In addition to these, I also got to enjoy many Pacific oysters grown across Baja California Norte and Sur by Bendito Mar and their network of small, artisanal ostioneras. Plus one rando Eastern oyster served at a cute bar.

There's also one oyster producer in BCS that hatches Kumamoto (Magallana sikamea) seed, but we didn't taste any on this trip. No one seemed to know much about Ostrea conchaphila either 🤷‍♀️

05/26/2026

To all the shucks I've loved before. 🌷

All but slide 2 and 3 were shucked my me in my kitchen. The more I hone my shucking ability, the less I feel inclined to go out for oysters. (As I'm often disappointed.) It's a blessing and a curse!

Can anyone relate?

05/25/2026

🔎 Oyster Plex > Groundhog

Every spring, the crew at Island Creek Oyster Farm moves their oyster plexes back into Duxbury Bay (internally known as "Crane Day").

I had always wondered where the idea behind these mini floating houses came from. Island Creek founder Skip Bennett started the trend back in 2004. He first worked off his boat, then a tiny two-person float. Then he had the idea to put a house on a 40-foot float. Everyone thought it would sink or flip. Luckily, it did not. Oyster plexes are now a seasonal fixture along the bay, and the words "Oyster Plex" now even appear in Massachusetts state legislation.

I spent a full day with the Island Creek team on their Duxbury campus—exploring the hatchery, caviar room, getting a taste of their Saquish grow site, and eating very well at both Island Creek's farmside raw bar and Windsor House next door. It's been very cool to watch their operations grow over the years!

A huge thank you to the whole ICO crew for being such great hosts and showing me what makes this place so special.

🦪
📍 Duxbury, MA

04/01/2026

New product launch! Introducing OYSTERQIU: the world’s first regenerative chewing gum, made with real oysters.

I’ve always insisted that to truly appreciate an oyster’s merroir, you have to chew it. Even my last name (Qiu) is instructionally pronounced like chew. 🤣

So I started wondering: what if I could isolate that specific sensory experience to places that don't have access to fresh oysters?

We’ve spent the last year working with food scientists to stabilize authentic oyster liquor and protein from the adductor muscle into a chewable, shelf-stable format. Each pack features a curated selection of sticks made with fresh oysters from distinct regions, allowing you to experience a side-by-side comparison of different water profiles without the need for a shucking knife.



Which flavor are you the most excited to try?